The present invention relates to an electrical and electronics bay of an aircraft with an improved architecture and an aircraft incorporating said bay.
As illustrated in FIG. 1, a civil airplane comprises a nose cone 10 comprising in the upper part a cockpit 12 arranged in front of a cabin 14 intended for passengers and in the lower part an electrical and electronics bay 16 (E&E bay) arranged under the cockpit 12, possibly partly under the cabin 14, and in front of a baggage hold 18.
For the remainder of the description, the electrical and electronics bay will be named as the E&E bay. The longitudinal direction DL corresponds to the direction which goes from the nose cone of the aircraft to the tail cone. A transverse plane is equivalent to a plane perpendicular to the longitudinal direction.
In this E&E bay 16 are situated various hardware items necessary, notably for piloting the airplane, for managing the electrical energy and the other networks such as the communications and fluidic networks. Thus, as illustrated in FIG. 3, the E&E bay 16 comprises avionics cabinets 20C, 20D, 20G incorporating computers, electrical power centers 22D, 22G, additional elements 24D, 24G to the electrical power centers such as batteries or power transformers, as well as electrical, communications and fluidic networks linking these various elements 20C, 20D, 20G, 22D, 22G, 24D, 24G. The fluidic networks are specifically provided to ensure the cooling of all these elements.
According to one embodiment, the electrical power centers 22D and 22G occupy a substantially parallelepipedal volume in the manner of a cabinet. The same is true for the avionics cabinets 20C, 20D and 20G. The additional elements 24D and 24G have more complicated shapes and are not organized in cabinet shapes.
According to a first constraint related to safety, the electrical and electronics systems present on board of an aircraft (particularly the most sensitive) are redundant. Thus, the E&E bay 16 comprises two electrical power centers, at least two avionics cabinets (or even three in the example illustrated in FIG. 3) and two sets of additional elements of the electrical power centers.
According to a second constraint related to the segregation principle, the E&E bay 16 comprises two sets, a right set 26D with an electrical power center 22D, an avionics cabinet 20D and additional elements 24D of the electrical power center 22D, and a left set 26G with an electrical power center 22G, an avionics cabinet 20G and additional elements 24G of the electrical power center 22G, the electrical power centers of the two sets having to be separated by a minimum regulation distance in the order of a meter.
According to another constraint related to the correct operation of the electrical and electronics elements, they must be temperature-regulated. Consequently, the avionics cabinets and the electrical power centers are linked to means for evacuating the heat released by these elements which generally appear in the form of air ducts.
According to another constraint related to maintenance, it is necessary to be able to access all the elements present in the E&E bay.
Taking these constraints into account, as illustrated in FIG. 3, the E&E bay 16 comprises four corridors C1 to C4 bordering five rows R1 to R5 of elements oriented along the longitudinal direction DL. Thus, the E&E bay 16 comprises, from left to right, a row R1 of additional elements 24G, a corridor C1, a row R2 incorporating the electrical power center 22G, a corridor C2, a row R3 incorporating a central avionics cabinet 20C, a corridor C3, a row R4 incorporating the electrical power center 22D, a corridor C4, a row R5 of additional elements 24D. The avionics cabinets 20G and 20D are oriented in such a way that their lengths are perpendicular to the longitudinal direction DL and are separated from the rows R2 to R4. The avionics cabinet 20G is arranged facing the corridors C1 and C2 and facing the row R2, the avionics cabinet 20D is arranged facing the corridors C3 and C4 and facing the row R4.
This architecture makes it possible to access all the elements present in the E&E bay 16 as well as the two faces of each electrical power center and of each avionics cabinet, which simplifies maintenance.
According to another aspect, this architecture makes it possible to satisfy another constraint concerning the accessibility of the clean water supply circuit and of the draining circuit for waste water from the toilets situated at the back of the cockpit. Thus, using the corridors C1 and C4, it is possible to access these elements situated under the cabin floor during maintenance operations.
Taking into account the growing need for electrical and electronic functions on aircraft, the volumes occupied by the various elements present in the E&E bay tend to significantly increase despite the permanent progress made in the field of electronics component incorporation.
However, due to economic constraints, it is necessary to avoid increasing the volume of the E&E bay (or even to reduce it) in order to avoid reducing the volume of the zones that ensure the profitability of the aircraft such as the passenger cabin and the baggage hold.
Consequently, in order to achieve this goal, it is necessary to increase the density of the elements present in the E&E bay 16.
A first solution could be to reduce the width of the corridors. However, this solution is not optimal because it is necessary to conserve a minimum width between the rows to be able to install the various elements in the E&E bay and to carry out maintenance. Moreover, the minimum width of the corridors C2 and C3 is imposed by the segregation principle.